Typically that's not a question you're happy to hear from your hiking companions. Especially when you're thinking it yourself, and you're the trip leader.

But staring in bewildered astonishment is common in Utah canyon country. Not because you're lost, but because what you see strongly suggests that last bend in the trail somehow transported you to Mars.

Suddenly nothing in sight jives with your conception of Earth. Your mental wheels spin furiously: no traction whatsoever. And that's the appeal of this exotic realm.

Exploring Utah canyon country is as close to vacationing on a distant planet as we earthlings will probably ever manage. It's as otherworldly as it gets without requiring a spacesuit to step out of your vehicle.

Yet a three-hour flight or an 18-hour drive is all that separates Calgarians from southern Utah's redrock cliffs, desert, ancient ruins, soaring arches, and certified massage therapist known as "the desert sun."

The first hint you've arrived on alien soil is the region's colour palette. It's as appetizing as it is arresting. Honey, mustard, salmon, tangerine, pumpkin, peach, coffee, and chocolate appear in distinct strata representing 300 million years of geologic history.

Next comes the antigravity sensation of walking on sandstone. Known as "slickrock," it's frequently underfoot and rapturously liberating. The rock's gritty surface ("slick" is a misnomer) grants extraordinary traction, enabling you to negotiate steep pitches with Spider-Man confidence. And it's rock, so there's no vegetation to shunt you this way or that. You can follow your bliss.

Wherever your bliss leads, you'll soon realize you are indeed a stranger in a strange land, because you'll encounter evidence of the natives who preceded you thousands of years ago.

They carved and painted bizarre, dramatic images on rock surfaces. They built fantastic, multistory, stone-and-mortar structures. Much of their art and architecture remains remarkably intact. Alert hikers see it constantly.

Then there's the topography itself. It's called "canyon country" because it's cracked open. Shot full of fissures. From airy vantages, gazing across it is like staring up at a clear night sky.

The baffling, dizzying complexity of southern Utah is as unfathomable as an infinite, star-filled universe.

And many of the canyons harbour natural wonders -- arches, bridges, alcoves, hoodoos, fins, pinnacles, domes, hamburger buns, mushrooms, flying saucers -- as if the rock had once been Play-Doh in the hands of an imaginative child. Some of these geologic anomalies are delicate, intimate. Others are massive, overwhelming. All look so improbable you'd expect to find them only in a book by Dr. Seuss or perhaps a documentary film about Planet Zenon.

You can of course sample the beauty and mystery of southern Utah without hiking. All the state's famous, national parks-Zion -- Bryce, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands, Arches -- have paved roads and convenient viewpoints.

Why shoulder a pack and plod beyond? For the same reason Neil Armstrong didn't just peer out the window of his Apollo 11 lunar module once he'd landed on the moon. He came to experience, not just sightsee. So he went for a walk. You should too.

Fisher Towers

Location: Colorado River Canyon, northeast of Moab

Round-trip distance: 7.4 kilometres

Elevation gain: 320 metres

Hiking time: 2.5 to 3.5 hours

The Colorado River is a prolific artist. But her most famous work, the Grand Canyon, overshadows her myriad, extraordinary creations. One of them -- the Fisher Towers -- is a cluster of lofty, rococo monoliths including the 274-metre Titan. The trail winding among them provides a fascinating encounter with the eccentric towers plus sweeping vistas across the Colorado River Canyon and into the La Sal Mountains. Parents herding kids find this an ideal outing.

Corona Arch

Location: Potash Road, west of Moab

Round-trip distance: 5 kilometres

Elevation gain: 170 metres

Hiking time: 1.5 to 2.5 hours

Closer to Moab than any of the arches consecrated in nearby Arches National Park -- yet equally impressive and far less crowded -- is Corona Arch. It's mammoth: 43 metres high, spanning 102 metres. The setting is magnificent: on the wall of Bootlegger Canyon, in an amphitheatre also containing Bowtie Arch. This very short hike is a fun romp, mostly on slickrock, suitable for families with children.

Angels Landing

Location: Zion Canyon, Zion

National Park

Round-trip distance: 8.4 kilometres

Elevation gain: 457 metres

Hiking time: 2 to 3 hours

If angels actually visit us, and they need a majestic place to alight-someplace near to earth yet close to heaven-this would be it. Angels Landing is a peninsula, a mountainous wall, thrusting into Zion Canyon, forcing the Virgin River to detour around it. A short but very steep ascent culminates atop the slender, airy crest. Here, high above the canyon floor, you can overlook the heart of Zion National Park. Though the trail is quite safe given the vertical terrain, acrophobes should hike elsewhere.

A long drive on a dirt road, then an easy hike into Horseshoe Canyon, is all it takes to see North America's premier display of prehistoric rock art. Known as the Great Gallery, it's 4.6 metres high and 61 metres long.

The 75, life-size, phantom-like figures were painted 2,000 to 8,000 years ago by Desert Archaic Indians. The centrepiece is a 2.1-metre-tall, ethereal presence known as the Holy Ghost.

It has huge, vacant eyes, a head that appears to waver, and a streamlined, armless, legless body that seems to be rising. The anthropomorphs surrounding it also look like they're in perpetual vertical motion. Researchers believe the artists where shamans attempting to show their spiritual journey from the human world to the realm of the spirit. Shedding their physicality, they felt weightless, hence the streamlined bodies. Departing for the unknown, they felt they were travelling, hence the skyward trajectory. Perhaps they were saying to the tribe, "This was our experience. This is what is possible for our species."

Paria River Canyon

Location: Paria Canyon, Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness, east of Kanab

One-way distance: 62 kilometres

Elevation loss: 345 metres

Hiking time: 3 to 5 days

Canyons are terrestrial lacerations. They range from paper cuts to gaping wounds.

You'll witness the entire spectrum while hiking Paria River Canyon.

With the riverbed as your trail, you'll often splash through ankle-deep water.

The vertical walls rise 823 metres high. The serpentine narrows constrict to just two metres.

Sleeping within the depths of this exquisitely serene canyon, you'll feel the embrace of Mother Earth.

Go with friends so you'll have a second vehicle. Arrange a shuttle, then hike one way, downstream, between the White House and Lee's Ferry trailheads.

Craig Copeland and his wife, photographer Kathy Copeland, have written numerous guidebooks including the recently published Hiking From Here to WOW: Utah Canyon Country and Done In a Day: Moab, the Ten Premier Hikes www.hikingcamping.com).

If You Go

- When to go: Utah canyon country (blistering summers, nippy winters) affords about 13 weeks of optimal, warm, hiking-camping weather: late September through mid-November, and mid-March through April. That's just 25 per cent of the year. Carpe diem.

- Where to stay: Sorrel River Ranch (www.sorrelriver.com) offers luxury a la Louis L'Amour. The property, the rooms, the service, the food- all live up to the grandeur of the surrounding high desert. Sorrel is the only Small Luxury Hotel in Utah and the only AAA Four-Diamond resort in Moab.

- Boulder -- a molecule of a town between Escalante and Capitol Reef National Park -- is graced with the Boulder Mountain Lodge (www.boulder-utah.com). Outside Magazine raved about it in an article titled The Perfect 10: Adventure Lodges We Love. Next door, the Hell's Backbone Grill (www.hellsbackbonegrill.com) earned a stellar review in The New York Times.

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